Eck, ichi. I really don't get you. You have a place at MM where you can engage in relatively free and rowdy political exchange without fear of being banned or having the thread deleted yet you want more? ..... and what the heck is wrong with the name? <br><br>As Alec pointed out, it's very apropos. I don't imagine the folks standing on their soapboxes in Hyde Park consider it demeaning. I guess Eck can be forgiven, being German, if his grasp of the English language is not on the same level as those of us this side of the pond and that the use of the word "soapbox" is neither demeaning nor derogatory.<br><br>

<br>[color:blue]Eck can be forgiven, if his grasp of the English language is not on the same level as those of us this side of the pond ...</font color=blue><br><br>I did post graduate work in English and have sufficient grasp of the language, to understand the origin of the word SoapBox. But the origin of a word does not cover its etymological development.<br><br>While Speaker's Corner in Hyde Park retained its neutral connotations, "there he goes on his soap box again" certainly has gained entirely different overtones, which Wiki also takes note of by adding "It is also used to express concerns or to release frustration."<br><br><br><br><br><br>

<br>no no no, for heaven's sake, nothing should be taken away!!! <br>There#s the election campaign, the economy, Iran, so much I'd like to tell you about Europe and especially Sarkozy .... nope, a wide-open discussion floor is absolutely needed.<br><br><br><br>

I know the confab has evolved, but DANG! I never thought my complaint about having a thread moved would have generated this much energy.<br><br><OL><B>"my motivation is that i my thinking isn't compartmentalized."</B></OL>and<OL><B>"I don't care if people talk about it.. As long as they don't bring it to every discussion. I can choose to not read threads I know will be arguments..."</B></OL>These two statements pretty much cover my conflict about what's going on with this discussion.<br><br>I bring my experience from the Adobe Forums to bear in my preferences regarding whether forums are subdivided and how.<br><br>Over there, for the first 4+ years of my regular participation there, the "Hosts" (Mods) were continually reminding people that the discussions were to be kept focused on Photoshop, or Illustrator, or Acrobat or whatever, and when confabs drifted too far away from their respective headers, the Hosts would play Nanny/Cop and remind folks to get back on track or the thread would be locked down to being Read-Only. Not infrequently, the Hosts would be a little more vigorous and rigid about their reminders and decisions than many of the regulars were comfortable with. Often, off-topic replies were edited out by the Hosts. I don't know of ANY forum where people cotton to having their words removed.<br><br>At one point it was suggested that an off-topic Lounge should be created as a sub-forum of the Photoshop Forums (the Mac and Windows forums were separate, and were by far the most heavily traveled forum of all of Adobes product forums). After all, there were many folks there who had gotten to know each other well, and we wanted a place to talk about our favorite music, complaints about customers, jobs & cow-orkers, sports, movies, and anything else that might come up between friends.<br><br>After some time and discussion among hosts and paid Adobe administrators, the Photoshop Lounge was created. It got going, and turned rambunctious pretty quickly. We loved it because we were finally free to stray from strict discussions of <B><I>just</B></I> Photoshop. Some of the more staid regulars who visited early on didn't find it to their liking, and complained that it should be abolished. It wasn't Adobe's place to host such a "chatty" and wild forum on their dime.<br><br>We long-time regular participants on the Adobe Forums who loved the idea of an off-topic Lounge countered with a couple good arguments:<OL>[*]Where do they think Adobe's "dime" comes from? That's right—the customers who buy their products. We regular visitors and contributors, who know the product so well, and who spend untold hours volunteering our time and knowledge <B><I><U>for free</U></I></B> to help folks learn and understand the application. We're faster to respond and collectively know more about Photoshop than Adobe's own technical support employees. We, who are ostensibly acting as a vast, unpaid—and extremely valuable—resource representing Adobe's products really do deserve to have our wishes considered.[*]Without the Lounge's presence—people being how they are—the off-topic conversations which caused the Hosts so much consternation would simply return to the main Photoshop Forums.</OL>So, the Lounge stayed. And it's evolved. It's gotten pretty crazy at times, but it's survived through several threats to shut it down. All we needed to do was remind the Hosts how much hassle they had to deal with before its creation. Most of the Hosts and the paid Adobe admins now agree that it was a pretty good idea.<br><br>The Adobe Photoshop Lounge started out as a free-for-all. Hardly anything except porn/seriously vulgar was off limits, and we really didn't have much of a problem with that anyway, as we were 99.5% 20-some years old or more, with many of us in our 30's 40's and 50's or older, like here at MacMinute. Self-regulation worked and the nasty stuff wasn't really an issue...we just all kind of gravitated toward topics we were all, collectively, comfortable with. <br><br>And again—people being how they are—topics might start out on one thing, then drift into something completely different, changing direction many times, the longer folks kept replying to it. But this was pretty much OK, because it was the Lounge. But eventually, consensus demanded that we ought to try to keep certain things contained to particular threads. Several of us were quite vocal about our dislike of having so many different threads drift into political arguments; after all, almost anything can be related to whatever is going on in the political environment of the times, so it was easy and common for this to happen. So we decided it would be best to start one or two threads that were reserved for JUST political discussions. This worked really well, and this bit of self-regulation was heeded by almost everybody (we have one bad-ass over there who won't follow ANYONE'S directives).<br><br>Then, other topics started getting their own threads, such as:<OL><LI>"What Music Are You Playing Today?"<LI>"Biblioholics Anonymous"<LI>"Geeky Cool Science Stuff"<LI>"Be-eer!"<LI>"Production Gripes"<LI>"The Movies"<LI>"R.I.P."<LI>"NFL-(fill in the year)"<LI>"Baseball (fill in the year)"<LI>"Stories About Our Kids"<LI>"The Weather"<LI>"Who's Going to Be The Next President?"[*]"What's On The Menu Now?"<LI>"Quote of the Day"<LI>"News Snippets"<LI>"YouTube, Google Video, etc--Links to the Brilliant, Hilarious and Thought-Provoking" (we can't embed video or audio over there)</OL>This has worked out really well, mostly because it has become accepted practice among the regulars. Since these are popular topics, they get posted to often. Another reason it works is because the threads that are posted to most recently get popped up to the top of the thread title index, keeping them visible and viable. That happens to threads here as well, depending on how the user has set their preferences.<br><br>5+ years on, the Adobe Photoshop Lounge continues to thrive, and has been a gathering place for a bunch of people who have grown to like—or at the very least, respect— each other. It's not always a land of milk & honey, but it works better than any alternative that anyone has come up with.<br><br>On the one hand, I kind of like things to be compartmentalized here, just as I like it in the Adobe Photoshop Lounge. It makes things easy to find, and when we have a topic to add to one of the popular topics, we know right where to go. And so does everyone else who might just want to read, perhaps looking for a political discussion, or a book or movie recommendation, or to read about some newly discovered band.<br><br>Case in point in the MM forum:<br>The thread I started called "The self-rising all food & recipe thread." It seems pretty popular, and the theory seems to work here as well—people who want to yack specifically about that topic know where to go, and when it gets replied to, it pops up to the top (well, at least for those of us who have set our MM Forum prefs to make that happen).<br><br>On the other hand, that fact of life remains: Threads will drift. No big deal. That's the nature of conversation among friends. It's no great shakes if a thread starts off about, say, the TV show "24", for example, and then veers into how to grab it using your Apple TV set-up, or if references are made between the TV show and current politics. But if the confab wants to continue in that vein, perhaps by mutual agreement we could all decide to move it to a more appropriate thread. Surely there will be disagreement about when the discussion should be continued in that more appropriate thread, but hey, we're all fairly reasonable adults. We can work it out just fine...<br><br>...And with barely any interaction by a moderator.<br><br>I'm not saying that things here should operate exactly like they do in the Adobe Photoshop Lounge, but over there we've come up with some pretty good ways to deal with the issues being discussed in this thread.<br><br>IMNSO, moderators should go about their business with kid gloves and an <B><I>extremely</I></B> light touch. This is especially true if they're not also regular participants, and/or if they choose to remain relatively anonymous (Who is [color:green] "Moderator"</font> here, Greenme?..I'm not even sure). Killing Spam and spanking the obviously interloping hit-and-run trolls about the only things I think they're really needed for. We're mostly all big boys and girls. We don't need to be fussed over, or told what we may speak about, or admonished because we posted something in the wrong place. <B><I><U>WE</B></I></U> are the community here, and as big boys and girls of a reasonably well-adjusted social nature, we can do a fine job of policing ourselves, If we need your help, we all know how to use the Private Messaging system in place here.<br><br>—(Apologies to those who hate long posts, but better I say it all in one place than to break the continuity. I'm working up to applying for the job of becoming Shooshie's assistant genius )<br><br><br><br>

Regarding the name of the "Political Soapbox" section:<br><br>What has always come to my mind's eye when I think of that name is the area of Hyde Park in London (I think that's where it is) where folks regularly hold forth on whatever topic they choose—often it's politics—by standing on a box and just letting 'er fly.<br><br>Because of that imagery, I find the title of that sub-forum rather quaint and amusing.<br><br><B>(ADDENDUM: Oh...I went back and read the stuff I missed while I was composing the long reply, and I see that you already referred to "Speaker's Corner", Eckhard. I was just happy I got the location of the park right, having never been there! )</B><br><P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by Phosphor on 01/22/08 12:54 PM (server time).</EM></FONT></P>

Eck, give it up.<br><br>Just open all three rooms in tabs and call it a day.<br><br>What bothers me here is those that seem to be adopting such a hostile attitude towards others that have the gall (as they would put it) to suggest that the current way of doing things maybe isn't exactly ideal. It's one thing to say "things have been this way and they are working just fine." But it's quite another to say so while showing one's teeth.<br><br>And that attitude brings out the worst in me (and others I imagine) therefore perpetuating the situation. Case in point: someone posted a screenshot showing that they hadn't visited the political room as if it was a badge of honor. It disgusted me. Badge of honor? In such dire times, I would think that it might be a full of subjects that (you know, might possibly) be worth a look. But no.... That badge of honor was, if you ask me, a badge of disgrace. <br><br>But I digress...<br><br>Those individuals (for all I know) feed their minds elsewhere and come to MM for escape (doubt it though), and that's fine. <br><br>Enough rambling... <br><br>Just open the three rooms in tabs and drop the topic. And let this godforsaken thread drop into oblivion.<br><br>I'm out<br><br>

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